


guilt

by Liu



Series: something in the water [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, beddie, i had to get this out of my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 03:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2717048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/pseuds/Liu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-ep08. Barry feels guilty because he can't really say 'sorry' to Eddie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	guilt

Barry feels like shit.

  
This week has been full of days from hell, and it resulted in him acting like a total asshole. He knows that; he’s not proud of what he’d done, but he’s not going to hide behind the easy excuse of having been under the Rainbow Eyes’ dude influence (or whatever Cisco has decided to call him). The guy might have forced his anger to come out in all those nasty, aggressive ways, but Barry is all too aware of the core of the problem, and that’s him, no one else. As he’d told Oliver: those feelings he’d vented on people, they had to already be inside of him, buried deep down because he was an adult who could deal with petty anger or jealousy and not take it out on people he cared about.

So he said ‘sorry’ to Oliver, who’d accepted it… he said ‘sorry’ to Iris, in the only way he knew how, because he couldn’t very well go to her as Barry Allen, Your Friendly Neighborhood Superspeed Weirdo. And even if she didn’t accept it, not at all, Barry can still tell himself that at least, he tried. He could say sorry to her as The Flash, and he can still talk to her as Barry, and it isn’t completely right, but it’s something.

More than he has with Eddie.

 

Okay, so he’s jealous of Eddie – he only knew the guy for a few days before the explosion, and he accepted this image of him as a golden child, always praised for everything, a little spoiled and extremely cocky. He didn’t exactly LIKE Eddie at first. And after he woke up and realized that Eddie was dating Iris now, his dislike for the guy only grew.

However, it soon became apparent that hating Eddie Thawne isn’t as easy as Barry had thought it would be. He believed that he could bury himself in his petty dislike of the man, maybe occasionally hold lab results requested by Eddie just an hour longer to annoy him, or steal his donut or any number of tiny things that would make Barry feel satisfied in a very childish, fleeting way.

But Eddie… he is… nice. Genuinely, annoyingly nice. Barry doesn’t know if it’s because Iris wouldn’t like it if Eddie was a dick to her friend – he thought that was the reason, at first. But Eddie didn’t STOP being nice to him, even when Iris can’t see… he hangs around, asks for Barry’s opinion on crime scenes, doesn’t treat him like Barry is somehow inferior, like some other officers sometimes do.

He invited Barry to box with him – he HELPED Barry, even though Eddie probably has no clue how much. And all this time, he is just grinning and winking and teasing, and Barry didn’t even notice when he stopped hating Eddie and started feeling like a dick for trying to wedge himself between him and Iris. After all, Barry had his chance, an infinite number of them all these years, and he never told Iris how he felt… Eddie is the one who was brave enough to seize his chance, and Barry can’t really justify hating someone just because they were braver than him.

Well, turns out his resentment of Eddie didn’t go away as completely as he’d thought – Barry winces at the memory of throwing Eddie around like that, of how he could’ve been seriously hurt when he was pulled out of that car, skidding over the rough surface of the road. How Barry attacked him, blinded by rage, not even certain if it was about Iris or about the fact that Eddie thought of him as dangerous, as a criminal, and Barry had a hard time reconciling those two completely different views of HIM from the same person. Sure, Iris is (was) also looking differently at The Flash, but… it’s still kind of the same. Iris likes Barry Allen, and she liked The Flash too, the like was just laced with admiration or hero worship or whatever it was. It’s a different shade of the same feeling; with Eddie, it’s crazy. Eddie’s friendly to him one moment, and wants to arrest him the next - and Barry still kind of sucks at drawing a line between ‘Barry’ and ‘The Flash’.

And now, he can’t even apologize because Eddie would probably SHOOT him if Barry went to the man in his red suit… and he can’t say anything as Barry either because he technically isn’t supposed to KNOW it happened. And it’s fucking eating him up, especially when he comes to work the next morning and Eddie smiles at him, split lip and scraped-up forehead and cheek, and he’s trying to hide a limp and all of it is Barry’s fault, but Eddie still smiles at him and Barry just wants to say sorry. And he can’t.

It takes him about ten minutes to get some coffee (the jokes about police station coffee being made in hell weren’t just jokes) and donuts: nine and a half of those he has to spend waiting in line, but for once, he doesn’t mind so much; he needs the time to figure out what he’s going to say.

In the end, he doesn’t figure out much: when Eddie looks up at him from his desk, which suddenly has fresh, steaming coffee and two big donuts on it, Barry can just shrug and smile a little.

“Comfort food,” he says, and Eddie grins at him slowly, in that brilliant way of his that lights up his eyes, and Barry feels even worse. Shit… donuts and coffee aren’t going to chase away this feeling of guilt gnawing at his insides…

He just has to try harder to make it up to Eddie somehow. So he does just that: when Eddie requests a lab report, Barry makes sure that it gets to Eddie as fast as he can do it. When Eddie can’t find a pen on a crime scene, Barry hands him his; when Eddie’s working overtime (as he often does), more coffee is waiting for him. Barry knows they are just tiny things and it isn’t the same as a real apology… but he can’t stop the feeling of guilt that pushes him to do all these things.

After a week, he doesn’t even think about it anymore as he brings Eddie coffee again and again on his way to work. Eddie just looks at him now, like he is trying to figure it out, and Barry smiles nervously and walks to his lab as fast as he can without rousing suspicion. He should probably stop this before Eddie realizes… Barry doesn’t think he could really handle it if Eddie points a gun at him (again).

He focuses on his work that day; he wasn’t called to the field, so he doesn’t even notice how much time passed until it’s dark outside and the noises of the police station have subsided. When a knock tears him from his thoughts, he looks up, only to find Eddie there, an evidence bag in his hand.

“Hey,” Eddie says, “could you look at this tomorrow? We found it in the Connor house, might give us a clue about the perp-“

“Yeah, I’ll do it right away,” Barry stands up to take the bag; Eddie shakes his head, holding it out of his reach.

“No rush, Allen, it’s late already… go home and sleep, will you?”

“It’s fine, I’ve got nothing else to do… what are friends for if not for getting your evidence processed faster, right?” Barry argues with a lame joke. But Eddie frowns, swallows, looking like he’s bracing for something, and Barry pulls his hand back slowly.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, even though he doesn’t want to – but maybe he’s just being paranoid. Maybe Eddie’s just worried about his case…

“I know what you’re doing,” Eddie speaks slowly, and doesn’t even avert his eyes, looking straight at Barry. A sense of dread floods Barry’s senses, but he pushes it down – there’s no way Eddie could’ve figured it out… right?!

“What?” he says weakly. Eddie frowns in response.

“I know what you’re doing. And it’s got to stop.”

Barry gapes a little at that, afraid to say anything in case Eddie really is talking about something else. It’s killing him – and he has no clue when it became a problem for him that he can’t tell Eddie about who he really is… but Barry feels it now, feels it like this huge rift between them, and the sudden epiphany is that he doesn’t WANT that rift there.

Eddie looks at him for a moment, then drops the plastic bag on the nearby table, turning to the door again; Barry knows he should just let him walk away, but he HAS to know. He tells himself it’s just for the sake of his own protection, that he needs to know if Eddie figured out who The Flash is, so that Barry can ask him not to talk, can explain, can APOLOGIZE. He almost manages to lie to himself that it’s got nothing to do with his strange suicidal wish that Eddie knows more about him.

He has a hand on Eddie’s arm to stop him before he can really think about it:

“Eddie-“

Eddie’s hands grab his shoulders in the next second as Eddie whips around. Barry can’t really USE his speed, but he can still see the range of mixed emotions on Eddie’s face for that brief moment before Eddie looks at him again.

“Don’t do this, Allen. I’m sorry if I’ve given you a wrong impression- well, not entirely wrong,” he smirks wryly and looks away for a moment; all Barry can do is stare at the fading scab on Eddie’s lip, one that HE put there on that road. A surge of guilt fills Barry’s stomach, and he doesn’t interrupt. It doesn’t take long for Eddie to shift his eyes to him again:

“But this can’t go on, you understand? I love Iris-“

Huh? What does that have to do with anything? Is this Eddie’s way of saying that because he loves Iris and Barry’s Iris’ friend, that Eddie won’t tell anyone… as long as Barry stops being The Flash or… what?

“-and you just…” Eddie sounds pained, like he’s at a loss for words. His eyes are determined, though, as he takes a deep breath and speaks again.

“You can’t be all cute and flirty with me anymore, okay? It’s not healthy for either of us.”

Barry’s brain short-circuits – maybe that’s why he isn’t fast enough to even process what’s happening before Eddie’s lips are on his, a soft, warm touch that’s over before Barry can react. Eddie’s face is still close, too close, Barry can feel his breath, and the intensity of Eddie’s look sends a shiver down Barry’s spine.

“This can’t happen again, alright? Just because I’m attracted to you doesn’t mean I’ll be that guy who cheats on a girl he loves. And I don’t think that’s what you want either, to hurt Iris… no matter how you might feel about me,” Eddie adds quietly and lets Barry go. Then he’s gone, and Barry is still staring at the door, all sorts of unsettling feelings coursing through him. And underneath all that panic and worry and shock… there’s a tiny little jolt of something that he’s terrified to even examine.

He brings his hand to his lips, still dazed and his mind blank.

Well… shit.


End file.
